Washer/dryer placement

[gmvh]

I need opinions!

We just bought a new-to-us house and the washer and dryer sit in the kitchen with no closet or other surround.  We're planning to move them. 

The house is a ranch with all the bedrooms along a hall.  The master has three closets, two in the bedroom proper and one in the mbath.

Here are the options.

1.  Put them in the basement. 

2.  Put them in the master bathroom closet and lose the closet.

We have more clothes than we need but not so much that we won't fit them in the two other closets.  There is a linen closet in the hall bath.

Thoughts?  Things we should consider?

Thanks!

[KristyDi]

When you say basement do you mean a place you have to go down steps to reach?  If so then I'd say in the closet without a doubt.  I have a split level with the laundry downstairs.  I hate having to carry laundry up and down the stairs all the time.  I wind up with leaving lots of clothes down there because I can't carry them all at once.  Then I wind up having to run downstairs while getting dressed because I'm missing underwear or a shirt or something.

I think it'd be really nice to have the laundry be so convenient to the place where you keep your clothes.  The only down side I see is if you have kids that do laundry then you have them coming through your bedroom to get to the laundry.

[gmvh]

Oh yeah, it would properly be in the basement, down the stairs and right to the concrete floor.

I hadn't thought about the children having to head into my room to do their laundry.  I'll have to sit on that idea for a bit.

I'm trying to work out other options as we may be gutting the main living area.

[Sharon, RN]

I hate having a laundry in the basement, personally.  I'd rather put up with kids trudging through my room (which, frankly, they do anyway) than to have to lug laundry to the basement.  It's not so much the stairs, as I feel I can't multitask while doing laundry in the basement, if that makes sense.  It's like a total extra trip for something.  I have lived in places that have had the laundry in the basement, next to the kitchen, in the kitchen (weird), and upstairs, 2nd floor, near the bedrooms (our current house).  

Hands down, the best one ever was the washer and dryer in the kitchen.  Sounds goofy, I know, but in retrospect it was just easier for me.  I loved the idea of the 2nd floor laundry when we bought this house, but unless I'm hanging out upstairs all day (which, uh, never happens for a myriad of reasons) I just never get around to doing all my laundry.  I either throw some in in the morning before I go downstairs, or I throw some in at night before I go to sleep.  Like, today I did some towels in the morning, but I've been busy, so before I go to bed I'll throw them in the dryer.  It shouldn't take 12 hours to do 1 load of laundry, but it does for me!  But I'm always in the kitchen/family room, so being able to sort/wash/dry/fold during the day while cooking/cleaning/doing homework/going insane with my toddler  would work out really good for me, and did in the past.  If I could remodel our house, I would have the laundry near the kitchen.

Good luck!

[bezark]

I'd do anything to never have to do laundry in a basement again.

I agree with a PP; the best laundry setup we've ever had was in our last house where they were in the kitchen, which was directly next to the living room. We don't use paper products, so we end up with a lot of kitchen laundry. It was nice to be able to just toss all of the daily rags and towels right in the wash as soon as we were done with them, and I could fold everything on the island and watch while DS played in the living room.

The laundry was in the basement when we moved to our current house, and our bedroom and the laundry corner of the basement were the two absolute farthest points from each other in our big, old, chock-full-of-hallways house. I think I did about 5 loads of laundry at home in the month between moving in and moving the washer and dryer. It's now in what used to be a coat closet in our foyer, right next to the family room on one side, and the stairs that lead to the bedrooms on the other. We considered putting them on the second floor with the bedrooms, but like PP said, I just don't spend enough time upstairs for that to really work out. I'd still take that over the basement any day.

[gmvh]

Thanks, everyone.  You're confirming all of my thoughts.  My husband has been thinking that we'll move it from the kitchen into the basement and I'm not on board with that.

I hear what you're saying about a second floor laundry being only slightly better than the basement due to time spent.  This house is a ranch and I WOH so I'm never in my bedroom one way or the other!  Part of my husband's thought process is that we tend to do laundry only once a week so it really piles up and then we sort it onto the basement floor while we move through the heaps and if we put the machines in our bedroom, that we'll be signing up for a lifetime of piles of laundry on our floor. 

I'm thinking that we'd need to reorganize how we collect the dirty laundry - sorters, perhaps, and when one is full, toss it in.  We are also a paper-free family and the mountain of linens is crazy.

In my perfect world, this would be a four bedroom house and we'd convert one to a family closet/laundry room but he'd never go for it!

Thanks again!  I'd love to hear more options for where families have laundry built in and how you deal with it if it's in a primary living space.

[mumm]

When I lived in a ranch I loved having my laundry in the basement. 

When the kids were totally muddy and needed to just put clothes right into the wash we would go in through the basment, get naked and then go upstairs to wash/clean, get dry clothes.  I didn't have to take the dirty clothes through the house.   Same thing for pukey sheets and sick towels.  Dump them on the floor and just wait till I could tend to them.  Order, germs out of sight.

I could go right out the basement door to the backyard to hang dry clothes.

I could leave things unfolded for a long time and no one saw!

I could hang dry things in the winter across the basment and let them dry.

Now I live in a colonial with laundry on the second floor.  It has it's pros and cons too though.